Vangeli per la Famiglia - XI Domenica - Anno A - "Testimoni del Regno di Dio" - 14/06/26

www.chiesadomestica.org From the Gospel according to Matthew Mt 9:36 – 10:8 When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." Calling his twelve disciples to him, he gave them authority over unclean spirits, to drive them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. The names of the twelve apostles are: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who later betrayed him. These are the Twelve whom Jesus sent out, commanding them: "Do not go among the Gentiles, and do not enter any town of the Samaritans. Go instead to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, preach, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give." The word of the Lord. _____________________________________ Dearly beloved Today's Gospel tells us of the calling of the Twelve Apostles and their mission as heralds and witnesses of the coming of the Kingdom of God. A mission repeated at the moment of the Ascension, but extended to all disciples, to all of us. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:19-21). These are the final words of the Risen One before leaving the world in His body to return in His Spirit on the day of Pentecost, so that He might be present with His Spirit in the hearts of every baptized person, "until the end of the world," as He had promised (cf. Mk 16:15-19 and Acts 1:9-11). It is therefore a mission that concerns not only bishops and priests as successors of the Apostles, but today more than ever, all disciples, the entire Church, all the baptized, each of us. In the Apostolic Exhortation that Pope Saint John Paul II wrote in 1988 in preparation for the Jubilee of the New Millennium, that of the Year 2000, he appealed to the laity, and families in particular, as the New Evangelizers of the Third Millennium in which we live. If in the First Millennium the evangelizers were monks and in the Second Millennium the religious, in the Third Millennium the evangelizing force of the Church must necessarily be all the laity and families, the "cells" of the Mystical Body of the Church. I say "necessarily" because it is first and foremost a matter of numbers. We are today in a world with the most up-to-date real-time estimate of the world's population, 8.3 billion people on earth (to be precise, 8,298,908,479 according to the "Worldometer" as of June 14, 2026, with an annual growth rate of 0.8%). If, then, we must remain faithful to the Risen Lord's mandate to evangelize "all peoples" and not a few small minority, do we want to do so with the few hundred thousand priests, friars, and nuns living on earth today? It's simply ridiculous! But if we considered all the baptized as an evangelizing force—as Catholics, we numbered approximately 1.4 billion (17.8%) in 2024, and as Christians (Catholic and non-Catholic) in 2026, we number between 2.4 and 2.6 billion, about a third of humanity—then yes, we can continue today the "universal" evangelizing mission that Christ left us. This is what Saint John Paul II wanted to tell us forty years ago, updating the numbers, of course. And what is the "good news" we must all bring? It is that "the Kingdom of God is near," as Jesus did, caring for all the suffering people he met along his path, fighting against evil in all its physical and spiritual forms ("demons"). Yes, because the Kingdom of God—as the Our Father teaches us—is doing God's will, and wherever there are those who do God's will, there the Kingdom of God is present. Proclaiming the Gospel, therefore, is not proselytizing, perhaps door-to-door like the sects. It's exactly the opposite: it's ensuring that both those who suffer and those who sacrifice themselves to help those who suffer don't feel alone and abandoned by God and humanity. Humanity is truly like an immense field of ripe wheat, of ears of corn left alone in their pain and sacrifice, which risk rotting if there isn't someone to gather them into "sheaves" in communities of people and families who love and support one another because, in the light of God's Word, they feel loved and supported by God. This is why we can and must all be evangelizers in today's Church: witnesses of God's and the Church's closeness to those who suffer and to those who care for them. Hugs Gf